Experienced members base sauce of choice

[adriandavidb]

Could be tomarto soup!

[alfieb]

Cheers Jerry glad you knew what i was on about with the TA could it be tomato soup has ive looked at bases with soup,tomatoe ketchup etc. But i must say i thought darths would take some beating for my own taste buds but the sns base was absolutely cock on.Im glad i made the base as i was just going to stick with darths because it was still very good. But the sns base had the colour, smell and great taste.I still got a bit of the creamy/gravy taste but the end result was comparable if not better and more subtle than the ta.Delighted

[Panpot]

Over recent weeks I have experimented with 3 separate base sauces, SnS's, Rajver's and one from a friend.

I have to say that SnS's was by far the best and got best remarks from friends too.

It was however the last one used and I did add to the recipes the Onion Paste.

Admin has suggested I revisit the use of the paste in a fresh post so will do that in due course. Cheers Panpot

[JerryM]

Panpot,

what is the onion paste u refer to - i've not come across anything for adding to a base. i've read back through the post but can't seem to find anything.

is there an existing post or do we need to wait for the revisit

[Panpot]

Sorry JerryM, I have now raised the onion paste thing in a fresh post, hopefully it will be of use. In any event it is added at the final cooking stage and not directly to the base but its presence may have made the difference to the taste of the curries cooked with SnS's base as I didn't have it while cooking with the other two. Cheers Panpot

[knighty76]

Just wondering if Panpot's Ashoka base will make it onto this thread? Although it seems that the use of Onion Bunjara is an integral part of the process, so perhaps the base itself can't be assessed all on it's own?

Interested to hear feedback from the experienced guys on here.

Cheers,
Rich.

[Bobby Bhuna]

Interested to hear feedback from the experienced guys on here.

Well I've tried most of the bases on here, including the Ashoka, with and without the Bunjara paste. It's really quite good, along with the other better bases on the site...

[tgad2007]

Last night i spent 4 hours in an inddian restuarant around my local area that has a fantastic reputation.  The owner also cooks and has been a friend of mine for many years.  After lots of nagging over the years he finally gave mee a few cooking lessons.  Here is the base sauce we made up that he regularly uses in his restuarant, I am not 100% sure of the exact amounts of each ingredient but we also made up a smaller batch of the same that i brought home.

VEGETABLES are as follows:

10 onions finely chopped
1 green and 1 red pepper de-seeded and finely chopped
2 carrots finely chopped
1 tin of chopped tomatoes (400g)

firstly we put in 2 tablespoons of oil in a hot stock pot and fried a tablespoon of garlic and ginger paste (65%ginger-35%garlic approx). waited till it went a little bit brown. Then added all the oniions followed by the rest of the veg and half teaspoon of salt. stir then add some water just to cover the top of the veg and stir and leave it till the veg becomes soft.  After once the oil rises to the top and the colour begins to turns a little orangey let simmer for a short while then add the spices.

SPICES as follows:
level teaspoon of turmeric,
2 teaspoons of mix spice (own blend of cumin, coriander, standard curry powder and small amount of turmeric for colour),
Half a teaspoon of own special blend of ground spices, this consisted of cinnamon sticks,cumin seeds,kasia bark,fennel seeds,bay leaves,black peppercorns,green cardamon pods,whole cloves. these were all slowly roasted overnight in an oven and then broken up and ground down to a powder. (he called it garam masala).

His reason to add the spices after all the veg had gone soft was because the spices could sink and burn slightly and ruin the gravy.
This was then left to simmer for 5minutes before being taken off the heat and then blended. after blending water was added to make it a bit more watery and any excess oil was removed from the top and used for cooking, the gravy was then heated up again just to mix in the added water and it was then ready, very simple. I'm not sure if this helps anybody but it is the first time i have learnt to make a base and seen it made first hand in a restuarant and i have read so many threads about a "secret ingredient" maybe it could be the hamemade garam masala i described
as i have not yet read about anyone else doing this but adding whole bay leaves and cinnamon sticks whilst cooking aswell as pods and cloves then removing before serving.  cheers guys let me knoe how you get on as this is my first post.

[Cory Ander]

Nice report Tgad, thanks for sharing it with us 

Overnight roasting of the whole spices is interesting.  I would have thought that would be far too long (though I am aware that spices are sometimes "deep roasted"). 

It's also interesting that he fries the onions/garlic/ginger, before boiling, and adds garam masala to the base.  I'm surprised such little oil rises to the top.

Otherwise, it seems pretty similar to several other bases on this forum.

What approximate weight of onions would you say he used?  How were the resultant curries?  Did you get recipes for those too?

[JerryM]

tgad2007,

real good post and very timely for myself.

i've been wrestling with making a "low" spice base for a while. i've just not been convinced that it would improve what i already produce. your report has convinced me to try it. i've currently settled on around 3.5% based on the initial volume of onion c/w ~1% for yours. i've based the 10 off onion on 1400g. i have tried a 1% spice base before (KC's) but there are a few differences, particularly the use of garam.

this base also goes in the opposite direction for me in a few areas (amount of oil, g/g paste). the amount of oil is 1% based on the initial volume of onion (c/w my norm of ~7%) and i've recently had better result dropping ginger and increasing garlic. the total amount is also very much lower than i use.

the method and makeup of the garam as CA says is interesting. Secret Santa had suggested recently that "whole spice" could be ground and added direct. your chef's mixture is certainly more towards garam than whole spice. i am surprised the chef does not just use branded. i think this must be so that he can get the proportions exactly as he likes them. this a i could very much understand. i particularly like the idea of using both cinnamon and casia.

i feel i'd like to give the method a try - what temp was the oven set at and roughly how many hours.